This subject matter disclosed in this specification relates to techniques for designing wellbore operations. In particular, this specification discloses a method and associated system and program storage device and computer program for developing earth models for designing drilling and/or completions operations for a wellbore penetrating a subterranean formation.
Many reservoirs did do not have sufficient permeability to be commercial unless a hydraulic fracture was is created that connected more of the reservoir to the wellbore. Permeability is “the ability, or measurement of a rock's ability, to transmit fluids, typically measured in darcies or millidarcies.” (Schlumberger Oilfield Glossary.) In addition, the hydraulic fracture (or other completion pathway, such as the perforation) also needed needs to have a sufficient permeability permeability in order for the reservoir to be commercial. (The term “conductivity” is often used to describe the permeability of a fracture.) As the search for hydrocarbons continues and the price of hydrocarbon increases, technologies are developing that allow commercial production from reservoirs with ‘micro Darcy’ permeability and lower. However, commercial development is often limited by insufficient permeability of the completion pathway. This specification discloses a ‘workflow that models and optimizes drilling and completion operations in hydrocarbon reservoirs’, where the reservoirs may or may not be naturally fractured. That is, the aforementioned ‘workflow that optimizes drilling and completion operations in hydrocarbon reservoirs’ will characterize or determine a set of ‘properties of the reservoir’ with enough clarity in order to design one or more ‘drilling and completion operations’, such that the ‘drilling and completion operations will minimize the damage to the hydrocarbon reservoir, minimize the damage to the completion pathway, maximize the production rate, and maximize the ultimate recovery.